1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a backbone edge switching apparatus and a packet processing method of the backbone edge switching apparatus, and more particularly, to a backbone edge switching apparatus that may select or additionally use a flow according to a plurality of layers, and thereby may overcome a problem occurring due to a use of a single layer, and a packet processing method of the backbone edge switching apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
Ethernet was developed by Robert Metcalfe and David Boggs in early of 1970s. Ethernet standards supporting 100 Mbps, 1 Gbps, and 10 Gbps, starting from 10 Mbps, were completed by an Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802.3 working group. A standardization supporting 40 Gbps or 100 Gbps is currently underway.
Ethernet was initially developed for a short-range communication. However, as connections of regionally distributed networks and an Internet access become more important, there is an increasing need for a high speed wideband network service.
An Ethernet technology has been disclosed to meet the above need.
Metro Ethernet denotes a network configuration scheme of expanding an existing local area network to a wide area of a metropolitan size. Currently, the Ethernet technology has been expanded from a local area to a metro area, and is aiming to be expanded further to a backbone area. Accordingly, proposed is a method of transforming and expanding a data link layer 2 (L2) switch structure, developed by an existing IEEE802.1 working group, to be suitable for backbone.
An IEEE802.1ag (Connectivity Fault Management) standard for assigning a fault recovery function and a reliability function by alleviating a vulnerable Operation, Administration, and Maintenance (OAM) of Ethernet, an IEEE802.1ah (Provider Backbone Bridge) standard for enhancing a virtual local area network (VLAN) of Ethernet, an IEEE802.1Qag (Provider Backbone Bridge-Traffic Engineering) standard, and the like are being standardized.
Generally, a transmission service of a backbone network may provide a point-to-point connection service in a time division multiplexing (TDM) scheme over a Synchronous Optical Networking (SONET) or Synchronous Digital Hierarchy (SDH) network.
However, due to a fixed speed, a capacity extension cost, and the like, the existing backbone network may be structurally inflexible to receive a new business model.
Accordingly, a method that may provide a point-to-point backbone network transmission service may be sought in a data link L2 and a network layer 3 (L3).
However, a transmission service in the data link L2 corresponds to a frame relay scheme, an Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) scheme, and the like, however, has some problem in an expansibility as a connection-oriented service. In addition, the data link L2 may be inappropriate for transferring sporadically occurring data. Accordingly, a Permanent Virtual Connection (PVC) service may be used to replace a dedicated line of the SONET/SDH network.
A transmission service in the network L3 corresponds to an Internet Protocol (IP)-based scheme, and may be relatively inexpensive compared to the SONET/SDH network and a data link L2 scheme. However, in order to guarantee a quality of service (QoS), the above schemes may need to maintain an average network use rate to be less than or equal to 30%. In addition, the above schemes may not guarantee a strict Service Level Agreement (SLA).